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Rockburn LP Style Electric Guitar Pack

“
Perfect for beginners, this pack comes complete with guitar, amp, strap, spare strings and a tutorial DVD. Whist the guitar looks great out of the box, build quality isn't the best, but for the price it's to be expected. „

Advantages

Disadvantages

A beautiful but unusable guitar

Rock burn LP Style Electric Guitar Pack

After buying my son the Martin Smith acoustic guitar (Previously reviewed) for his birthday last year, I had promised that I would buy him an electric guitar for Christmas if he had learnt to play 10 individual songs/tunes by then. I didn't expect him to do it as he had never even attempted to play anything on a guitar until his birthday which incidentally was September, so I had given a complete novice, the task of learning to play all these different songs in four months. Well he really showed me. He was determined and low and behold he played me 10 different songs on his acoustic guitar by the time I'd said. I was amazed at how well he had picked the whole learning to play the guitar thing up. He had taught himself everything from tuning to actually playing the chords.

What was included in the pack

As promised, I bought him his first electric guitar for Christmas. We had sat together at the computer looking at different style guitars. He wanted a Les Paul but sadly the nearest thing he was going to get was a cheap copy, I'm not made of money. Anyway, he decided on this Rock burn LP Style Electric Guitar Pack. It included a 10watt amp which isn't too bad for a small amp, it gives out pretty good sound even though it is really small and basic, it's good enough for what my son needs and the amp cable is a decent size, a guitar strap which is really basic, a spare set of strings, a couple of picks/plectrums and a tutorial DVD with on screen guitar tuner, which are really just what they say they are. I bought the guitar pack from Argos although it was an online deal only. It cost about £144.00 including postage. However I see it's now going for £112.00 with free postage, typical.

I am going to concentrate more on the guitar than the actual pack, as I feel the guitar needs the most explaining.

What the guitar looks like

The colour of this guitar in my opinion is beautiful, it's called silver starburst and looks truly amazing. The back of the guitar including neck and headstock are a black high gloss finish, with the most beautiful silvery grey shiny front body. The fret board is rosewood with pearl effect markers. There are four volume control knobs and a switch to change from rhythm to treble. The guitar also has a place where the guitar strap can be fitted, along with the connection for the amp cable. The tuning pegs on the headstock are really shiny silver these keep the 6 steel strings tightly in place at one end while the other end of the strings are fastened securely within a silver plate. The guitar is heavy though, I was quite surprised just how heavy it was when I first picked it up. But all in all it does look absolutely beautiful.

Our experiences

My son had been so excited in the lead up to Christmas, he knew he was getting the guitar but he hadn't actually seen it for real, I personally fell in love with it the minute I saw it, I knew he was going to feel the same way and I was really excited for him. Sadly though, this excitement was very short lived. Christmas morning when he saw the guitar his face was a picture, he was so pleased and so was I. I think it was about 30 minutes until the excitement turned to disaster. He had taken the guitar and accessories upstairs to set the guitar up. He had fitted the strap which had come with the guitar, put the guitar round his neck, stood up straight and that was it....

The beautiful guitar had slipped from the strap as the connection from guitar to strap had been way to loose, the guitar had slipped and fallen straight onto the amp, slicing one of the tuning pegs straight off...it was totally ruined, his Christmas, indeed Christmas for all of us was a disaster. We did manage to get a new tuning peg fitted a few days after Christmas, but that was beside the point the day itself had come and gone leaving nothing but a dark cloud behind.

With the tuning pegs all sorted, he could actually start to play and yes it sounded wonderful I didn't regret buying it at all, the quality of sound was spot on. But then the strings started to go, okay I know strings need changing on a guitar and I accept that but the strings were just going one after another, we invested in a better set of strings but then we found another problem with the guitar. Something near to the bridge had dropped the strings were sitting way to high. We took it in to a guitar shop for someone to look at it and he just said its all wrong that it really shouldn't be like it is.

Well I guess that's what you get for trying to buy something decent on the cheap. I thought it was too good to be true. This beautiful guitar had just been a disaster waiting to happen. It wasn't long after this that I noticed the beautiful high gloss back of the guitar was starting to bubble and peel. He did get some use out of it though and had taken it to school to use for his newly acquired guitar lessons.

Unfortunately it wasn't long before the guitar was unplayable, but not before I'd forked out more money for a hard case for him to take the guitar to school for his lessons. My son was gutted and so was I. So a word of advice, don't be tempted by how beautiful something is or how cheap something is because it will usually backfire, this guitar reminds me of the wicked queen in snow white, it looked so beautiful on the outside but really it was full of ugly things that just seemed to happen very quickly one after another.